Introduced by Matt
Two Bahama Mamas, Please 🦈
Although borderline calamitous in its execution at times, I digested the terminal death rattle of the Jaws series (on a 4:3, open matte VHS taped off the telly, no less) so often as a nipper that when its filmic son of Scheider dons that yellow (symbolic of danger 😉 as discussed in our original Jaws pod) raincoat, and ventures out aboard a boat, I start to feel a bit queasy. It gives me the seasick creeps, because ultimately it doesn’t matter whether a film’s much cop—if it swims beneath our skin at a certain age, it can remain there forever—nostalgia-soaked; unmarred by even the most sagacious professional criticism.
Jaws: The Revenge has the nerve to plonk a Poundland Michael J. Fox (Mitchell Anderson) as Sean Brody—thankfully not the forgettable, miscast John Putch from Jaws 3-D underlined, in front of us, followed by the actual generic bearded lead, Lance Guest (The Last Starfighter) doing his most middling work since Halloween II as the late Chief’s eldest, Michael (the fourth and final incarnation of each Brody sprog—ensuring there’s absolutely no connective tissue, or through line whatsoever, and we, the audience, must again start from scratch with entirely new actors in these roles).
Then there’s what can only be described as an exhaustive thesis in ham and cheese by Michael (I bought my mum a new gaff, and had a lovely ‘oliday in the Bahamas with this dosh) Caine as the sozzled, seaplane-piloting, degenerate gambler, all round cheeky chappie, and patronising grandma on the verge of a nervous breakdown chaser, “Hoagie,” eliciting bemusing Oedipal jealousy all over the shop. I will confess to mimicking Michael pulling on his moustache whiskers in reverie, and very specifically toying with a pencil over the years, as these throwaway character bits have each crept into my own human behaviour—much like quoting Costner in The Bodyguard, and pressing lift buttons with my thumb like John McClane, so perhaps there’s more value to Guest’s performance here than I initially gave credit for.
“Bloody hell! The breath on that thing!”
Hoagie, Jaws: The Revenge
The playground debate-baiting, would-be death of most folks’ fave Revenge character, Mario Van Peebles, as Jake baffled us all, causing playing field bickering beyond, as the BBC’s UK terrestrial screenings opted for the harsh finality of the U.S. theatrical cut ending, in which the Neptune’s Folly’s bow-breaks, and Jake is munched, taking a slo-mo plunge into the white shark’s gob (also his fate in Hank Searls’ novelisation), and yet other television showings chose to air the international home video and subsequent (otherwise butchered) DVD release denouement, which saw Jake miraculously return from the depths—bobbing up bitten and bloody, but very much alive. If the rumors are to be believed, it was a negative audience test screening demanding more ending excitement—hence the inexplicable exploding Jaws (of course the shark’s called “Jaws.” Here comes Jaws: Jaws the Shark—mind he doesn’t bite you with his enormous jaws), which also triggered a wet set reshoot, and the subsequent resurrection of Peebles.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way saying Jaws: The Revenge is a good film. The shark is so clean, it looks like it just escaped from Florida’s Universal Studios—rubbery, restricted, jerky movements and all. The film is utterly devoid of logic at times, the daft—but aren’t we clever cut to the eye of a cod or whatever, Ellen being psychically-tied to a large mackerel shark, the clunky, sepia flashbacks, and awkward deployment of film grammar-destroying, nonsensical dream sequences. All that being said, it’s nevertheless a drastic improvement on Jaws 3-D.
After the Quaid-led mess of 3, it’s almost enough to just see Ellen Brody—it’s enough to bump into characters we know from the familiar town of Amity, taking the ferry, running down its now historic beaches, walking around the same locations as the first, following in the Chief’s footsteps—and call me nuts, but killing off the Marty McFly-esque red herring protagonist, Sean, in the opening moments is kinda brave. However, signs we may have jumped the shark—Fonzie-style, include the openly ridiculed, audibly roaring beast, a self-reflexive, meta moment where Jake disputably mimics John Williams’ Jaws theme over the underwater CB radio, and a whopping white pointer somehow navigating the narrow corridors of a wrecked ship—though to counter that, I do endlessly enjoy Michael’s bubbly, bends-inducing, yet ingenious use of a scuba tank to escape to the surface.
“We got a big fish down here, man!”
Jake, Jaws: The Revenge
The mismatched, jumble sale sweater-vested dress sense—and even more muddled movie meanderings of America’s most birdbrained critical twosome, Shitskel and Eburk, each took delight in pointing out the picture’s finale was bizarrely missing an appropriate master shot to clue audiences into what was actually occurring. They’re not wrong; they’re just assholes. The bonkers levels of bloody geyser-spurt render the uncut version more satisfying—albeit in a preposterous way, but the death of The Revenge’s Carcharodon carcharias is an underwhelming catastrophe in the theatrical. The sequence drastically needed truncating. Although, I believe the filmmakers had enough coverage, as even an amateur YouTuber managed to experimentally trim the existing footage, and it’s a marked improvement—if a little abrupt, and crude in form.
S&E’s review lives in infamy as being among the most notorious, harshest, and arguably funniest reviews from their At the Movies segments, with the rotund, human dough-boy—schlubby Lego man, Ebert, peering at us achingly, like a bullied toddler through thick, jam jar glasses, hungrily pointing out logical fallacies regarding the shark’s POV, and pleading for acceptance from anyone who’ll listen. Then there’s the weedy Gene—candidate for world’s most asexual man—all corpse-like, with beige dismissals of truly great movies being a thing of regular occurrence, which I constantly attempt to capture in our Critics’ Corner segments. The snidey Siskel spouted, “An idiotic script sinks the whole show.” He loathed the dream sequences, appeared apoplectic, and relayed that audiences in his theatre were groaning, and that he felt an urge to punch a hole in the screen—which would’ve likely done more damage to his puny limbs than the theatrical paraphernalia.
Not wanting to be outdone, Ebert boastingly recounted shouting, “His shirt is dry!” aloud in his cinema showing, to which no doubt the entire audience lifted him up onto their shoulders, and declared him king of the pedants. He may have got a laugh from that particular preview audience, and I’m sure that gave him some semblance of satisfaction, being the desperate toad he is. As Ebert observed, “Mrs Brody could be haunted by flashbacks to events where she was not present, and that, in some cases, no survivors witnessed.” My infantile brain didn’t care. The Siskmeister General also latched onto the bugbear continuity error of a dry Caine when he clambers back on board the Folly after his seaplane vs shark altercation. They were obviously so bored that they noticed. I myself did not—especially as a little ‘un.
Jaws: The Revenge houses, “Old, cheap, lousy gimmicks,” which is rich coming from these two—their TV careers, at least, were based entirely upon the wafer-thin premise of two mutts pathetically bickering over movies for ratings. “Live in Iowa is the answer!” they chuckle. These two jerk-offs yank each other’s chains and giggle over the ineptitude of films that neither of them could’ve put together in a million years. They were clearly teased as children, and hold grudges against anything, and everyone they can, taking a palpable delight in the faux-intellectual destruction of someone’s art, whether it be Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, or Joseph Sargent’s Jaws: The Revenge. In future, I’ll be looking to their British counterpart—the equally elderly but more measured, Barry Norman instead.
“Shark still looks fake.”
Marty McFly, Back to the Future Part II
Late Comedian Richard Jeni’s face-slapping, career-defining, four-minute Johnny Carson Tonight Show appearance mostly milked the Brodys’ bloodthirsty Bahamas trip for material. Jeni recounts renting all four Jaws movies in a row, and joked The Revenge‘s title should have been, “Here’s a fish. You’re stupid.” He continued, “It’s 4 in the morning. You’re sitting there with one sweat sock and a burrito watching a shark that only kills one family out of an entire ocean full of perfectly edible people, for no reason that we ever explain. Call me a spinal column with a bucket of popcorn, but you couldn’t be stupid enough to enjoy it.” Well, I sure proved him wrong!
I was so miffed by these so-called reviews, with the majority of critics halfheartedly sticking the boot in with stale, self-evident assertions. It’s an easy target, and it struck me as indolent and quite elementary, as they rarely peered beyond the sluggish demise of the creature with its nonsensical roaring, and the dopey, misguided premise that the same shark family is chasing the same Brody bunch. There’s certainly a case for The Revenge being more of a laugh than Jaws 2, and in my mind it’s infinitely better than the indefensible Jaws 3-D. I invariably try to sneak The Revenge in somewhere between Boxing Day and New Year, because never mind the Die Hard non-debate, this is a Christmas film! Why not double bill it with The Muppet Christmas Carol for a second slice of Crimbo Caine? After all, what says Christmas more than the child character from your favourite film, bathed in red light, writhing in agony and grasping at a limb that’s no longer there whilst carols are sung joyously on the shore by cheery Amity islanders? Belated berry crumble to you all!
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